Ottawa thinks bigPostmedia’s Andrew Coyne proposes a “one-time-only electoral pact” between any and all parties who wish to change Canada’s federal voting system, for the sole purpose of accomplishing exactly that. Thus (for example) the Liberals, New Democrats and Greens would agree to nominate a single candidate in each riding, win a majority, change the voting system in two years at most, then dissolve Parliament and call another election “under the new system, with each party once again running under its own flag, with a new set of candidates.” It is indeed a lovely dream.

Astronaut, schmastronaut, the Ottawa Citizen‘s editorialists say (we’re paraphrasing) of Marc Garneau’s candidacy for the Liberal leadership. They’re much more impressed by his earthly accomplishments as head of the Canadian Space Agency. “A major goal of government today is to help Canada be a contender in research and development,” they argue. “That doesn’t mean shovelling money toward anyone who asks for it; it means identifying what sectors deserve support, and what kind of support they need.” And “that was Garneau’s job.” This positions him well, they feel, to run as the “science candidate” — especially since the Tories ain’t much for the book learnin’ and such.

The Sun Media editorialists deploy every space-related cliché in their arsenal to assert the superiority of Garneau’s candidacy to Justin Trudeau’s, and suggest the Conservatives would have a very hard time demonizing him as they did Michael Ignatieff and Stéphane Dion. But they complain that “people, especially young people, seem to be drinking up Trudeau’s Too-Kool Aid without checking the soda jerk’s lack of credentials.” (We’re sorry you had to read that, but frankly we were angry that we had to, and felt like taking it out on our readers.)

Stephen Harper, Doug Saunders writes in TheGlobe and Mail, “is probably the most economic nationalist prime minister since Pierre Trudeau.” This certainly represents “an interesting historical moment,” and an infuriating one for “true-blue free-market conservatives.” But it isn’t an outright rejection of globalization, in Saunders’ view, but rather a realization that “liberal markets” and “activist government assistance in a free economy” can be “mutually supportive” — and in a Canadian context, he argues, it’s very much of the Tory tradition.

“The Internet has done for porn what Stephen Harper wants to do for the oil sands — made cross-border commerce seamless and seemingly free,” Mark Bourrie writes in the National Post. And yet anonymous border guards still intercept all manner of inbound smut, according to criteria (if any) that we know nothing about. It doesn’t make much sense, as Bourrie says. “If anything, the Canadian Border Services’ Quarterly List of Admissible and Prohibited Titles is a great catalogue for pervs who want to shop online for the really naughty stuff.” (Bourrie includes some of these titles, incidentally, and we feel like the piece should come with a warning label. You know that scene in Clerks, in the video store with the mother and her kid? It’s like that, only the titles aren’t funny.)

CBC’s Brian Stewart argues that Canada should take a page from the Indians, Pakistanis, Nigerians, Bangladeshis, Ethiopians and other leading lights of modern peacekeeping and resume our rightful place as a key contributor of blue-helmeted troops. That way they’ll have something useful to do after Afghanistan, he argues, and it’s part of our heritage, yadda yadda yadda.

The Toronto Star‘s Chantal Hébert notes that Quebecers occupy many fewer power positions in Harper-era Ottawa than they did in Martin-era or Chrétien-era Ottawa. You could have knocked us over with a feather.

The Star‘s Tim Harper thinks the Conservatives might have a little more credibility in demanding openness and transparency from unions and first nations if their government wasn’t so bloody opaque itself. And he is correct.

Ford Bros. circus held overThe Toronto Sun‘s Sue Ann Levy finds it “interesting” that neither the City Council clerk nor deputy speaker John Parker warned Mayor Rob Ford that he oughtn’t speak to or vote on the motion that eventually got him turfed from office on a conflict of interest charge. She is careful not to insinuate that this might have been part of the “leftist-contrived coup” she describes in her lede, though the front page of the Sun is rather less circumspect: “Was he set up for a fall?” it asks.

Lorrie Goldstein, writing in the Sun Media papers, suspects John Tory is chastened enough by his past spectacular defeats, and encouraged enough by the influence and popularity he has gained since leaving politics, not to throw his hat in the ring to replace Ford. As Goldstein says, you could do a lot worse than being “the best mayor Toronto never had.” Like being nominally in charge of that monkey pavilion, for example.

In pursuit of equalityDuring a weekend that saw Justin Trudeau call the long-gun registry a “failure,” Janice Kennedy, writing in the Ottawa Citizen, tries to convince us, for the thrumpteenth time, that while “violence against women may be carried out by bullies, criminals and deranged individuals, … it exists because we all facilitate it.” And we’ll react as we always do: We do not facilitate violence against women, and we don’t much appreciate being accused of it.

The Post‘s Joe O’Connortells the story of a fellow in Newfoundland who thinks it’s unfair that girls in the Stephenville Minor Hockey Association can play both for a co-ed team and for an all-girls team, thus gaining twice the practice time and an advantage over the boys when it comes to selection for the association’s Batnam “A” team. He dares suggest this constitutes gender discrimination, and he is, of course correct. It will be interesting to see what the provincial Human Rights Commission says about it. It would be preferable, however, if the association just changed this silly state of affairs. (By Kennedy’s logic, mind you, that would probably be facilitating violence against women. Read her column and tell us we’re exaggerating.)